Articulate Musculature and Flourishing Hues (a long, essay post)

By American standards, I’d say I’m more or less of average build. I like to work out, but I don’t think anybody would describe me as “too muscle-y.” In China, however, that is not the case. Here, people sometimes come up to me in the gym or even on the street (yeah, sometimes I wear cut-offs, so what?) and give my arms a squeeze. “Sooo thick,” or “are they real?” Now while this is awesome for my ego, I’m not satisfied there. I want to know, why is it that the concept of body is so different in China than in the West? Let’s explore…


By comparing the two illustrations above (Hua Shou’s and Vesalius’), which are central to Shigehisa Kuriyama’s The Expressiveness of the Body…, one major conclusion is made (one that we already know), i.e., somewhere along the course of history, Greek and Chinese medicine has diverged. Through the eyes of modern medicine, with regard to Hua Shou’s figure, Chinese doctors have made a flagrant omission of the body’s most prominent feature - its musculature. While one picture is viewed as anatomical, the other is not. Clearly, structure and function of the human body are not universally understood as being the same, which begs the question of ‘On what basis are alternative perspectives of the body formed?’ And ‘How is one to apply this disparity of perception in the context of medical history?’ In debating the struggle of “belonging to” versus “possessing” and “the body” versus “self,” Kuriyama asserts that different conceptions of the body owe to different ways of thinking, evident between the East and West.

Clearly defined musculature, which on account of the traditions of Western art has accustomed us to imagining muscles as “salient perspicuous structures,” is something that Chinese medicine has all but neglected. So what is the true structure and function of the working body? Kuriyama provides insight in support of the fact that there is no “right” answer: As the 18th century art educator Charles-Antoine Jombert once asserted, novice drawing students must study anatomy in order to gain the ability to locate the whereabouts of the body’s muscles, as the average nude human figure has very few muscles clearly defined. This supports the idea that the eye perceives exactly what it is trained to perceive. Moreover, our current view of the human body is not so much seeing as it is projecting our imagination of what should be seen. One cannot ignore the influence of classical art and the media on the way we see, or want to see, the body. Ancient ideals of the sinewy and well-defined are continuing to be manifested in countless forms today.

Greek ideals of body and self, as Kuriyama argues, may stem from the idea of “anatomical seeing,” which is rooted in the medical practices of dissection and vivisection, tracing back to Alexandrian times. But was the development of anatomy an inevitability, as it has been treated by historians? Does the desire to know about the body translate directly into the desire to dissect? Kuriyama argues that it does not. For instance, one may study the affect on the body of certain foods in certain circumstances, or exercises, such as yoga, meditation, and breathing. Further still, one may examine how the body acts as an environmental being, shaped by air, water, and the stars, or how it changes when burned, bled, or needled. Accordingly, Kuriyama avows, one does not need a dismembered corpse to learn of the body. So why does anatomy hold so much authority in Western medicine? While many ancient cultures scrutinized the insides of animals and humans, they didn’t see things in the same way, or have the same “visual style” as physicians of the West. That is to say that the development of the anatomy we know today involved a unique desire, or a “distinct urge.” As Erwin Ackerknecht affirms, dissection is nothing without the right “scientific spirit.” And it is this spirit that forms the nature of anatomical seeing. Kuriyama attempts to characterize this spirit, or drive, as a quest to exhibit nature’s perfection, i.e., the divinity of design, or God’s flawless will. As he testifies, “creation is guided by an image: it is the act of translating imagined forms into matter.” Thus, the anatomist or dissector wanted to see God’s image, eventually uncovering his ultimate design.

As has become clear, there is a history to what Kuriyama calls “muscle-consciousness.” But the question remains, “What prompted the interest in muscles that normal men had not noticed before, and physicians had barely recognized?” This is an important query, as it’s evident that “muscle-consciousness” is not incidental of anatomy in general. Kuriyama traces the fixation on muscles to the idea of articulation, which, in ancient Greece and even today, is often seen as a mark of bravery and strong character. Articulation is basically the many differentiations that give the body its distinct form. Articulation to the Greek was seen as a strictly human characteristic, such as the articulation of the voice with the organs of speech. This was the common explanation given as to why only humans maintain the ability of speech. Muscular articulation, on the other hand, was seen as the product of struggle, or sustained exertion - something the Greeks admired. So, as Kuriyama details the “rich fabric of ideals woven around articulation,” he paints a clear picture of the opinion that, “visible joints…separate one part of the body from another, distinguish[ing] individuals from each other, [and] divid[ing] Europeans from Asians.”

After some time, the Greeks developed the idea that muscles had function, or unique agency. Anatomy and medicine evolved into an art concerned not so much about how the body looked, but how it worked. This is where Kuriyama’s chief contention about the origins of muscle-consciousness can be found: “The rise of the preoccupation with muscles is inextricably intertwined with the emergence of a particular conception of personhood.” That is, muscles allow one to choose what to do or how to act, as muscles are the “organs of voluntary motion.” Moreover, the use of these “organs of voluntary motion” requires practice and training. One may take language as an example: While the articulation of voice requires certain anatomy, it also calls for a self-mastery of sorts. This is why children cannot speak immediately after birth - Time is required to discern how to use what has been given to them.

It is this shift in thinking, from a “cosmic motion” (a soul, responsible for movement, derived from the divine ether) to the movement of an “autonomous agent” that provides for the basis of the Western understanding of self and its preoccupation with musculature. Kuriyama claims that “the obsession with muscles reflected the birth of a new experience of embodied life.” Specifically, the fixation on muscles cannot be understood without comprehending the history of Western culture and self-understanding.

As someone who lives in the Sahara Desert cannot imagine abundant water, an Eskimo cannot imagine a place as hot as the desert. Nonetheless, these two places are indeed physically connected, with only some slowly changing geographic features between them. The difficulty is in linking, or connecting the two, and educating both parties about what’s there. This analogy helps to imagine the division between Western and Eastern medicine – both have acquired practices and developed modes of thought that are simply consistent with their cultural and physical environment.